Irish-Americans have always been somewhat feted in their homeland, like a national gold card sitting proudly in the wallet of the State.
It hasn’t always been the same for the Irish in Britain, due to reasons rooted in Ireland’s complex historic relationship with its nearest neighbour to the east.
Irish emigrants to Britain were not as celebrated back home and many knew it, according to older members of the community to whom I have spoken over the past 2½ years.
“It’s a fair point,” said Neale Richmond, the Minister of State for Diaspora, as we supped coffee on Monday afternoon in the good room on the top floor of the Irish embassy.
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He was in London to launch the Global Irish Survey, a Government initiative to canvass the views of Irish emigrants and their descendants across the world, in advance of the publication next year of a new five-year strategy for the diaspora. According to Richmond, a key component will be to demonstrate to the Irish in Britain that the State values them.
The Minister said he believed President Michael D Higgins’s 2014 State visit to Britain was positive on a number of levels. He says it prompted the beginning of a “real release, a reawakening” among Irish people back home of their relationship with their Irish-British kin across the water.
The Irish who settled in Britain over past decades are now an aged community. They are one of the oldest ethnicities in Britain, according to census data. More than 32 per cent of those who ticked the “white Irish” box in the England and Wales census of 2021 were over 65. This compared with an average of 18 per cent for the rest of the population.
There were also 160 Irish centenarians in England and Wales in 2021, a proportion that was 1½ times more than the rest of the population. Anyone who is familiar with London’s old Irish haunts such as Kilburn, Cricklewood and Archway can attest to the ageing of the local embedded Irish population.
It is a similar story elsewhere in Britain, perhaps most notably in Coventry, where there is a particularly old Irish community that was curiously underappreciated back home.
Richmond said the State wants to send out the message to the Irish in Britain that “yes, they are celebrated” by the rest of us. He also made them a promise, as politicians do: “Using money from the Emigrant Support Programme, we will make sure their needs, particularly as they are later in life, are fully funded. The networks will be there, the lunch clubs, the bingo . . .”
Irish community groups in Britain, meanwhile, toil to help their members. Many operate under the umbrella organisation Irish in Britain, which is supported by the Irish Government. Most individual groups operate on a mix of State cash and their own fundraising.
Some Government funding is directed towards organisations such as the Irish Elderly Advice Network, which runs lunch clubs, and the London Irish Centre in Camden, which operates extensive community outreach to the ageing Irish in the city. So does the Irish Cultural Centre (ICC) in Hammersmith, which celebrates its 30th anniversary this year.
Wear away, don’t rust away
— John Hurley
The ICC last Thursday held an extravaganza to celebrate local Irish “elders”. It comprised an intergenerational project in which teenagers from the local Sacred Heart Catholic High School interviewed older Irish immigrants to London about the lives they built in the city and the lives they left behind.
The children sang songs and read poetry about their new older Irish friends. They screened an hour-long documentary they made about the elders.
We heard from 80-year-old Margaret Curran from Dublin, who moved to London 63 years ago and worked in the fashion industry. Her bridal designs used to make the front cover of Wedding and Home magazine.
Justa Madden, originally from Co Sligo, was also among the celebrated elders. After a sojourn in Chile, she moved to Britain and became a teacher. It is important to give students “awe and wonder”, she said.
Mary Leslie (90), originally from Athenry, Co Galway, advised the Sacred Heart students at the ICC to “be positive and you will see the bright side of life”.
Mary Hamrogue (86), from Ballinrobe, Co Mayo, came to London in 1958. She is now a stalwart of the ICC knitting club. She lamented that she no longer knows many of her neighbours in Hammersmith.
Mary Swan (90) was born in England to Irish parents but moved to Ireland aged four at the outbreak of the second World War in 1939. She returned to London aged 19 when she got married. In 2020, she was voted the Belle of Soho.
Cork man John Hurley (89), who moved to London aged 17, also shared his wisdom at the ICC project launch. He began writing at the age of 74 and has since published two novels, and also writes poems daily. His advice? “Wear away, don’t rust away.”
